You Are Enough! Have Fun and Create Community with Dale Sidebottom

Dale Sidebottom is a full-time play consultant, and the founder of Energetic Education and JUGAR LIFE. He uses his 20+ years of experience in the education and fitness sectors to educate schools, clubs, families, and corporations on the relationship between daily play and enhanced mental health and wellbeing. Dale is the author of ‘All Work No Play, the host of the top rating ‘Energetic Radio’ podcast, and a popular TEDx speaker.

In part 2 of our conversation, Dale will discuss ways that we can have more fun in our daily lives in order to connect with ourselves and with others. Dale is offering a free deck of Daily Mission Cards to the first 5 listeners to contact him with a way that you have spread kindness recently. 

Connect with Dale and his work at https://www.jugar.life/

Transcript

1:00

Welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay. And today Dale Sidebottom joins us again. He is the creator and founder of Zhuge Life and Energetic Education. Welcome back, Dale. Thank you, Magic. It's great to be back on the show again. So in our last episode, two, three, four, we discussed all our standard questions and we discussed how you can gamify things, how play works as an adult, but there's so much more to uncover. What can you tell the listeners that they really need to hear today? I'll tell the listeners that they're enough, celebrate your wins. Don't judge yourself to other people. I know I mentioned that in the last episode and make sure you're having fun. I just think this is something that it's really funny now and particularly a lot of work. I'll, I'll go to a school magic and, they will get me to come in and talk to like their students, a whole group or something. And they're simply saying, can you come in and teach our kids how to have fun and connect again? And I'm like, wow, this is, it's really scary because that's, that's real life. And. I'm fortunate that I didn't have lockdown and home learning and like I didn't lose two years of my teenage life. but I think also with that adults have had the same things taken away from them. and a lot of them have been homeschooling their kids or they've lost their job or there's just been so many negative things that have happened. So the one thing everybody needs to hear is just have fun. If you're not having fun, That's not on anybody else that is on you and you need to find ways to change that. I think that's the biggest realization I've had that if my day isn't going well and I check in with myself, have I done certain things? And normally I haven't done them. I might not have exercised in the morning. I may not have had some form of play. I may not have connected with a friend. But yeah, if, if, if you're not having fun or things are a bit tough, you need to stop what you're doing now, grab out the elastic like we spoke about last time, get a chair and get, get going, find a friend, anything, short, don't wait. I talk a lot about don't buying green bananas magic. No one buys green bananas because you cannot eat them. And if you do, that's disgusting. Don't buy green bananas because you cannot eat them right now. So what I'm saying is don't delay something. If there's something you want to do right now. Do it. All right. So don't say, Oh, I'll put that off next week to go into the gym. I'll do that holiday next year when I retire. Don't do that now. Stop buying green bananas, start living life and having fun. That would be my number one thing I want listeners to take away from today. Love it. All right. People are probably wondering what is Yuga life? What does it mean? Where does that word come from? And. What do you do? What is it? Yep. Uh, so sugar life. I think it's actually pronounced Olga. It's Spanish for play. Um, but I like saying sugar life better and that sort of rolls off the tongue. So essentially it is play for life and this all came about, I was about 30, 31, went through a really bad divorce and I was in a really negative place and the reason was is I wasn't a nice person. I was a bit of a narcissist. I was simply a workaholic and things came to a rut, but I didn't have anywhere to live. And anyway, I, I went through a lot of counseling and I did a lot of work on myself and I realized that. I wasn't a good person. And the reason was, is I didn't love myself. I was constantly, you know, working so hard, creating businesses. I'll be happy when, you know, I'll be happy when I get these happy. And then I didn't, I didn't celebrate and I was always happy and I was never present. and I, I realized that that's not living life. That's, that's skating through life and you're not getting anything there. So one thing I realized was each day when I started playing and I was still teaching at this stage and I was a bit selfish. I would add in three or four play games with the kids just in the classroom, silly ones throughout the day. And it was amazing how that changed my mood, how it blocked out all the noise from my divorce and how negative I felt about myself and all the horrible things going on. And I'm like, wow, that's my mindfulness. So Juga life came about simply through things that I learned about myself. And now I also use with other people and I call it the daily peg when I'm doing my workshops. And each day you need to have some form of play, exercise, gratitude, and giving. And if you can do that, and this is, it's really comical, but at the end of the day, you can get a peg and put it on your collar. And it's just a little reminder. And so what I try and do now is I. work with kids, adults, families, corporate sport clubs on ways to use play, ways to make exercise fun through play, different ways to practice gratitude with which isn't journaling. Journaling is great for a lot of people, but particularly if you're a kid, it's boring. It's repetitive. It's not the same. So I've created a number of ways to gamify. You know, practicing gratitude, working on different ways to be grateful for the things you do have instead of you don't. and then obviously kindness and giving they're the last two, because I feel it's important to give to others. But the one key magic we spoke about this before is you need to be kind to yourself. You can not do anything for anybody else until you start doing that. So essentially it's a multi disability business. We've got apps, we've got free course, we've got everything you need. To basically help you your mental and physical fitness, I call it, through play, through connecting with others, you know, and, and that's the biggest thing that, uh, I suppose Zhuge life or Huge life, however you want to say it. I went with that name because it's different and people, when they're pronouncing, you've done a great job pronouncing today, Magic, but they sort of remember it's a little bit different. Love it. We see so many apps on phones for elasticity and, you know, brain elasticity, but they still require you to sit there. And play the app, like you still got this thing in your hand that you're tied to. So what's the connection between elasticity of the brain and movement? Yeah. So, and those apps are great. Don't get me wrong, but a lot of the time, the problem with those apps, Magigar, Somebody is playing them by themselves with a device. Um, so for me, that's, that's like, that's great every now and then if you're on a plane or you, or you want to work on, you know, improving your brain and memory and different things like this, but the joy of play isn't playing on a device and. I've created over 30 mobile apps and I, I barely talk about those now because I don't want people using those apps. I want people going back and playing traditional games where, you know, dice, cards, paper, scissors, rock, really simple, randomized games that don't require anything. You can play them anywhere. but the biggest thing is, and like I said before, when they're playing these games on the iPad, they're doing it by themselves. Play is a gift that you give to yourself and other people and so little activities that you can do where you play with other people, it's amazing, you see, you see workplaces transform when and different sides of people come out and it's mental, the different sides of people that come out from these silly little games because they've never seen that side of them before and people lose their mind and they don't actually realize they're doing it and this is one of the things I talk about all the time, don't label other people. Don't label anything you're doing. So if I, if I walk in and I'm going to a workplace to do a session or something or a school, I wear shorts and t shirts and I'm comfortable and people look at me and go, Oh, what's this joke you're going to do? So instead of saying, we're going to play a game or we're going to practice gratitude. I don't do that. I simply go up. Can you clap with me? Or can you do a movement? And that movement. triggers them so they don't have a negative like connotation about I don't like games. I don't like this. So don't label what you're going to do. Um, particularly when we talk about, you know, practicing gratitude, I know I'm going around in a circle, I'll come back magic, but I love getting a dice pick six questions that you like practicing, you know, what's the best thing you did today? What was the highlight last week? Anyway. Instead of saying just pretty quick, roll the dice by rolling the dice, it gamifies, it makes it fun, it breaks down barriers and allows vulnerability to occur, then share it, share it with somebody else, draw it as a pictionary, get somebody to guess it. Once you've done it, put on a sticky note, stick it on the wall, make a gratitude wall. There are so many different ways to practice this and that is all play. So. What I love, and there are so many great apps out there, and I'm not dissing these at all, that is, they're brilliant and they've got causes, but for me, the brain works best when you're connecting with others, you're moving your body and you're laughing. And unfortunately, I haven't found an app yet that allows that to occur. Love it. Now, the listeners will know this because I've spoken about it before, but my family do medieval LARP. And so once a week we have permission to beat each other up with foam swords, which is good. I mean, it keeps the relationship healthy. I'm actually a healer. In my LARP character, as I'm a healer in life, so people come to me when they're, you know, in inverted commas, dead or dying. And I have to for 15 or 30 seconds, chant something to bring them back to life. And then they can go back into the game. Everyone else on the field. Right. I need to set this scene. Everyone else on the field is in their twenties or thirties. I'm 50. Okay. So everyone else on the field does this medieval chant and it sounds really authentic and it's great role play. And I chant the words to the song magic. From Xanadu. And no one actually knows what it is. So I actually gamify this for myself. Without being so serious. Healing people. Because I know what the song is. It's my favourite song. And these kids are down on one knee getting healed. With my hand on their shoulder going, Heck are you saying? What? What is that? See? Made you giggle. Makes me giggle. Oh, I love that. And that's, that makes me smile. Because. That's the best thing is creative play. Like, and you look at, you know, you look at all the skillsets we need in the world today, Magi. Creativity is nearly number one. And being curious is, I reckon, nearly the other. What you're doing by that, you know, your role play fighting year. That is being so creative. It is, it's incredible. And I would encourage anybody to find something like that. And if you feel silly doing it, that's even better. Like that's the best part about it. Isn't it? Like everybody's in it together. There's no judgment, very similar to what I was saying, last episode around, you know, finding a community. That uplifts you, that doesn't look down upon you. it's exactly the same. I love that. And I'd love to hear you rant your song. I reckon that'd be brilliant. Pretty funny. It's even funnier that I've been doing the same song as my healing chant for over 12 months. And they still have no idea where it's from. So as they go, I now say you need to watch It is a classic. They do need to watch it. They do. Now. We've spoken around games and we've spoken around laughter and fun. I'm normally a very serious person. In fact, you know, when people joke around, sometimes I just get really super annoyed because humor has to be on my terms for me. I know that's my character. So for the people that. Are a bit like me that go, nah, can't have fun. No, no, this is serious. What are some easy steps to transition to make it fun on your terms? Yeah, that's, it's a great question. And I get this question all the time, particularly. When I work in working, like when I go into a seminar, keynote or workshop or whatever, you'll get people that they feel uncomfortable and it's not what they want. and that's fine. I never force anybody to do anything. And I think that's the biggest thing. everybody is different. We're all unique. We're all got our different needs. I think it's really important to. You know, value other people and if they don't want to do it, never force anybody to do anything. You know, when you force somebody to do something magic, it never works out well for you or that other person. And I'm sure listeners are nodding along as well. So never force somebody to do something. But what I would say is if you are like that, you need to find Different avenues that you feel comfortable with and that that's the biggest thing if you if you don't like what other people are doing or other situations that's that's fine not a problem but you can't just really shut everything down you sort of need to bring something to the table and that would be my thing and what I say to everyone is. There's so many options in life. I think if you want to practice mindfulness, I think there's only 200 different definitions of what it actually is now, because it means something different to everybody. It's exactly the same with humor, with laugh, with play. There's a brilliant book called Play by Dr. Stuart Brown where he talks about people's play types and there are eight different play types. So you can't just roll into somebody and magic we might have completely different play types. I can't expect you to be on the same wavelength as me and you cannot do the same to me and I think that's where Non judgement comes into it. And that's the beauty of play. If you're judging someone or forcing someone to do something, Ah, that's red flags. No way. Catch you never. That's game over. So I would really, really investigate what your play type is. And not only that, find out what you like doing. All right. And, and bring that to the table and maybe negotiate with other people. It's, it's a, it's a negotiation like life. You cannot just dictate and say, no, I don't want this. This is my way. That won't work either. Um, so it's a dance, you know, sometimes you've got to give a little, take a little, go do a curtsy, a bow and an in fox shot. So, something like that. I reckon magic. Love it. All righty. So people can find you. On Insta, Twitter and LinkedIn at Dell side bottom. And those cards that we mentioned last episode are at www dot j UGA life slash daily mission cards. Wow. This has been a, a fun couple of episodes, Dale. I really, I've loved it, Magic. Thank you very much. I think a lot of the questions that we spoke about, they all relate back to everything that we've, you know, everything's very similar. And I think it comes back to the individual, uh, it comes back to having fun. And if you take one thing away from me today, Don't be so hard on yourself. I know everybody's got imperfections or things that they don't like about themselves. Do not focus on them. Focus on the things that are great about yourself and love yourself. All right. That's, that's the biggest thing I would love listeners to take away. And Magic, I really appreciate having you on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me listeners as always. Thank you for your time. Quick shout out to Dan who gave us a lovely review on Apple. We've shared it on our socials because we're just so happy that you're happy listening to the podcast. Listeners go forth and create your magical life.